“You’re white!” said the Pressman warmly, licking his pencil. “What did your elephant die of?”
“Seasickness!” said the Second Officer calmly.
“I’ve seen a few things worth seeing—myself,” said the Pressman enviously, “but not a seasick elephant.”
“With a professional lady-nurse in attendance,” said the Second Officer; “all complete from stem to stern, in her print gown, white apron, fly-away cap-rigging, and ward shoes.”
The Pressman grunted, but not from lack of interest. Doubled up in the corner of the smoke-room divan, his notebook balanced on his bulging shirt-front, he made furious notes. The Second Officer waited until the pencil seemed hungry, and then fed it with a little more information.
“When that girl came aboard at Liverpool with her mackintosh and holdall and little black shiny bag,” he went on, “I just noticed her in a passing sort of way as a fresh-colored, tidy-looking young woman, rather plump in the bows, and with an air as though she meant to get her full money’s worth out of her eleven-pound fare. But our cheap tariff had filled the passenger-lists fairly full, and I’d a long score of things to attend to. A special derrick had had to be rigged to sling the elephant’s cage aboard, and a capital one it was, of sound Indian teak strengthened with steel—must have cost a mint of money. We stowed it, after a lot of sweat and swearing, on the promenade deck, abaft the funnels, bolting it to rings specially screwed in the deck, passing a wire hawser across the top, which was made fast to the port and starboard davits, and rigging weather-screens of double tarpaulin to keep Bingo warm and dry. The other beasts we shipped under the lee of the forward cabin skylight; and I’d just got through the job when a quiet ladylike voice at my elbow says:
“‘If you please, officer, with regard to my patient, I wish to know——’
“‘Ask the purser, ma’am,’ I said, rather snappishly, for I was hot and worried ... ‘or the head-stewardess.’
“‘I have asked them both,’ says the voice in a calm, determined way, ‘and have been referred to you.’
“‘Well, what is it?’ says I.